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What are Managers for? (one more time)

Despite the ongoing professionalisation of ‘management’ as a distinct line of work, some questions remain too often unanswered.

A key one is ‘What IS the main task for any manager?’

If we wind back the clock to the 1950′s and 60′s we find that a wealth of research was going on to answer this problem, even though American industry and society appeared to still be riding the crest of a wave. Amongst the researchers was William B. Given, who was President of American Brake Shoe Corporation. ¬†Note that Given was not simply a practitioner, but also a graduate of Yale and MIT.

Given’s book Bottom-up Management: People Working Together published in 1949, was well ahead of its time. ¬†Peter Drucker cited Given’s book in his¬†The Practice of Management (1954).¬†And it was following a visit to American Brake Shoe that a business school student championed the refreshingly pointed term ‘Bottom-up Management’ to a wider audience.

According to Given, a good manager had to be a team player; yet like the captain of a sports team -not necessarily the best player- ¬†he had to be a leader; and also to exert a moral influence. ¬†Beyond the formal delegation of authority that was normal in the 40′s, he argued that each manager should deliberately pass elements of his own responsibility for decision-making down the chain, calling it ‘progressive decentralization’.

In both practice and in print Given pressed for personal freedom to be passed on to superintendent staff, ‘-to venture along new and untried paths; freedom to fight back if their ideas or plans are attacked by superirors; freedom to take calculated risks; freedom to fail’¬†- and according to the brothers Hopper (in their brilliant book ‘The Puritan Gift’ detailing the rise, and decline of Puritan values in North American enterprise) this is the genesis in print of ‘Bottom-up’ which today is a term given (sic) too little credit.

Oh how I wish more of today’s business school teachings took account of this strand of thinking…yet the concept that ‘Managers know what is to be done; and how’ persists in splendid isolation, and so is well beyond its use-by date. ¬†Of course the two are polar, and the truth in any situation will lie in experimentation and establishing a reasonable balance between the two.

Hence my plea to managers, their directors and (long-suffering) staffs, to practice both top-down and bottom-up patterns, according to what works well. ¬†A little open-minded experimentation will quickly prove the worth of the blend, and results will follow.